Smart motorways

A smart move for road safety

In a ‘victory’ for drivers, the Government has said it’s pausing the rollout of new smart motorway schemes until more safety data is available. Natalie Middleton reports.

The rollout of smart motorway schemes in the UK is now on hold after the Government accepted recommendations from the Transport Committee that more safety data on their operation is needed.

The move follows a damning report from the Transport Committee into ALR smart motorways, which said they should never have been rolled out without work on safety concerns and that the Department for Transport (DfT) and National Highways (previously Highways England) had failed to deliver on promises to implement safety improvements.

The report stated that the government decision in March 2020 for all new smart motorways to use the ALR format, rather than the earlier ‘dynamic’ system of activating the hard shoulder at busy times, was “premature” and called for a hold on future ALR schemes until five years of safety and economic data was available and safety improvements had been delivered and independently evaluated.

An announcement from the DfT in January confirmed the Government will move to collect this data for every alllane running scheme introduced before 2020 and will pause the conversion of seven dynamic hard shoulder motorways to ALR schemes.

It will also consider alternative options for enhancing capacity on the Strategic Road Network as it prepares for the next Road Investment Strategy. The case for controlled motorways will be revisited.

And the Government has also committed to improving safety measures on existing stretches of smart motorway. This will include investing £390m to install more than 150 additional emergency areas – representing around a 50% increase in places to stop by 2025 –giving drivers added reassurance.

The Transport Secretary has also committed to investigate the concept of an ‘emergency corridor’. The idea is to update the Highway Code to include the manoeuvre to help emergency services and traffic officers to access incidents when traffic is congested. In effect, traffic in the right-hand lane pulls over to the right and on the left-hand lane pulls over to the left, which leaves a corridor so that emergency services can access any incident rapidly.

Announcing the commitments, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “Pausing schemes yet to start construction and making multimillion-pound improvements to existing schemes will give drivers confidence and provide the data we need to inform our next steps. I want to thank safety campaigners, including those who have lost loved ones, for rightly striving for higher standards on our roads. I share their concerns.”

The move has been welcomed by road safety organisations, including the RAC, which said it was “an unqualified victory for drivers”.

RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes added: “Rather than ploughing on regardless in the face of mounting public opposition, we’re pleased the Government has finally hit the pause button and given itself time to fully consider the safety of these schemes, and the way our motorways are adapted to increase capacity from now on.

“We have long argued that dynamic hard shoulder and controlled motorway schemes – both of which feature a hard shoulder in some form – should be considered given their good safety record and it’s important these options are on the table. A further commitment to install an additional 150 refuge areas on existing schemes to bring them all up to the same standard is positive news and should go some way towards reassuring drivers worried about reaching one in an emergency.”

The AA also said that government action on increasing the number of emergency refuge areas would mean drivers were much less likely to become ‘sitting ducks’ on smart motorways and would help address its concerns over the fact that 38% of breakdowns on smart motorways occur in live lanes.

Edmund King, AA president, added: “The AA view remains that controlled motorways with a hard shoulder are the safest option and we are pleased that the business case for these will be examined.

“Whilst ‘smart’ motorways will never be perfect, we do believe that considerable progress has been made to make them safer.

“We will be holding the Government to account to ensure these actions will be implemented as soon as possible.”